


can't help this awful energy

by extasiswings



Series: a love like religion [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Avocados at Law, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Law School, Matt Murdock is very good at lying to himself and others, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 12:10:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4786784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are two forms of religious thought on the topic of soulmates, at least as far as Catholicism is concerned. One is that they come from God; that they’re a holy omen, a blessing. The other, well, it’s pretty much the exact opposite.</p><p>[Companion to: <em>such a fool for sacrifice</em>]</p>
            </blockquote>





	can't help this awful energy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shuofthewind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/gifts).



> If you haven't read such a fool for sacrifice, you might be a little confused at times. 
> 
> Warnings for:  
> Violence  
> Extreme self-loathing  
> Allusions to domestic violence and abuse (not of any of the characters involved)  
> Allusions to self-harm (again, none of the main characters)  
> It's Daredevil  
> If I've missed any, I'll come back and update this
> 
> Happy Reading!

There are two forms of religious thought on the topic of soulmates, at least as far as Catholicism is concerned. One is that they come from God; that they’re a holy omen, a blessing. The other, well, it’s pretty much the exact opposite.

Soulmates can be either platonic or romantic, matching people of any and every sex and gender identity, and almost everyone has one or the other. Some have both. Matt has both.

_Be careful of the Murdock boys. They’ve got the devil in ‘em._

Matt’s five when he hears his grandmother say it for the first time—

(—he’s sitting on the porch steps running his fingers over the gold platonic mark on his shoulder, tracing it because it’s not like everyone else’s, not words but a series of dots in strange patterns, slightly raised from his skin—)

—and he never forgets.

They don’t talk about his marks at home. He’s not sure if it’s because they’re weird, because he’s weird, or if it’s just because his parents weren’t soulmates and his mom left as soon as she found hers and his dad never really got over it.

(He doesn’t really remember her, but he thinks he can recall flashes sometimes of a soft voice and cool hands on his forehead and laughter from the other room and he thinks it broke something in his dad when she left because he’s never been quite the same as he looks in the few pictures they have as a family)

Whatever the reason, his marks _are_ weird, so it’s not such a bad thing that they don’t talk about them. He keeps them covered up, which is thankfully easy to do, and for the most part tries to forget about them. (It’s not like he’s going to meet either of his soulmates anyway if he doesn’t even know what they’re supposed to say).

Then the accident happens. It makes no sense to him then, none at all, because it’s a good thing he does, the right thing, saving that man but he loses his sight for it like he’s being punished and _it’s not fair because he did the right thing_.

(It’s after that when he realizes that his soulmarks are in braille, and there’s a part of him that wonders if there really is something of the devil in him, if the marks are a curse, because if they’re in braille, that means he was always meant to go blind, that the universe always knew, and his senses are all going haywire and it’s painful and that has to be a curse, it has to be, because nothing about it feels like a blessing)

Matt doesn’t touch his marks for over a year after that. He knows he could read them if he wanted to but he doesn’t, doesn’t want anything to do with the marks or the people behind them, so he doesn’t read them and part of him hopes he misses meeting them because of it.

His dad dies and everything falls apart. He starts touching the marks again almost out of necessity, like they’re touchstones, anchors, because the world is so loud and his dad is dead and it’s his fault (another curse, has to be) and he’s so desperately lonely that he doesn’t know what else to do.

When Stick shows up at the orphanage, at first Matt thinks he might be a blessing. He certainly isn’t a curse, couldn’t be, not when he makes the pain go away. But there’s something wrong with Stick, something fundamentally wrong, and he can’t figure out what it is until he brushes Stick’s wrist one day and feels the burn mark—scar tissue in multiple layers because it took several tries for it to take—and he just knows.

(There’s nothing wrong with rejecting a soulmate, technically, although most people think less of those who do unless it’s for a good reason like cheating or abuse, but physically burning off a soulmark seems extreme. That’s not just a rejection, that’s…well, it’s something, and it sends a shiver down his spine when he thinks about it because it’s wrong)

Stick has a lot to say about soulmates, but then Stick leaves, leaves because Matt was getting too attached, too emotional, and he’s angry because he’s a kid. He’s supposed to be emotional. So, he disregards everything Stick said where his soulmates are concerned because his marks were the only things he had to ground him before Stick and they’re the things that are still there when he’s gone.

(He touches them unconsciously sometimes when he thinks about that patch of scar tissue on Stick’s wrist. Runs his fingers over, “So what exactly is a tort anyway,” and, “Yeah, who are you looking for,” and thinks _mine, mine, mine_ , because he won’t, he can’t get rid of them, they’re his and they’re special, and he won’t let anyone take them from him)

As it happens, Matt really doesn’t know what a tort is, but when he looks it up, he finds out that it’s a type of law. He takes a few months at the end of his junior year in high school to think about it, but in the end, he decides that he could probably do really well in law. When applications start coming due, he applies to Columbia because it’s close and supposedly has a decent criminal justice program (not to mention an excellent law school for when he’s finished with undergrad) and when he gets in he doesn’t bother looking at his other acceptance letters.

It’s funny how some things work out though, because his schooling decisions may have been largely influenced by the words of his romantic soulmate, but it’s his platonic one that he meets first, and before the start of classes even.

(“Excuse me, is this room 312?”

“Yeah, who are you looking for?”)

Matt goes still when it happens, part of him wondering if it’s a fluke, because he’s the one who spoke first, but his potential soulmate isn’t even looking at him, but then he does, he does, and Matt can tell that he sees the cane and the glasses first (because everyone does), and there’s a small moment of awkwardness—

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

“You’re blind, right?”

“So they tell me.”

—but then the next words out of his roommate’s mouth are, “You’re my roomie! And…wait, holy shit, ‘Excuse me, is this room 312,’ you’re my soulmate! Dude, this is going to be so awesome,” and there’s really nothing much he can do other than grin like an idiot.

Life goes on from there. Matt and Foggy fall into being friends as easy as breathing (at least Foggy does even if Matt takes a little more time to adjust), as if it was meant to be, which, soulmates, so it kind of was. If Matt doesn’t make very many other friends, well, he’s been on his own for so long that even having Foggy in his life is an adjustment.

(That’s the reason at first. Later, after he starts putting on a mask and going out at night, he doesn’t get close to people because he doesn’t want to risk putting them in danger, doesn’t think he can afford significant relationships. He even considers trying to push Foggy away, but just the thought is enough to wreck him, so he labels it as the selfish act it is and does his best to make sure his soulmate never finds out)

The vigilante thing comes on gradually. It starts with small things, like bumping into people with drugged drinks at parties, putting himself between drunk girls and the guys who are trying to pick them up, offering to walk them home because, “No really, you’d be doing me the favor,” and his lack of sight becomes an excuse for all manner of perceived sins with him as the only one who knows it’s actually a weapon.

(He tells Foggy later that it started with that girl and her father, but although that may have been the first time he put on a mask and went out to actually solve a problem with his fists instead of the law, it wasn’t the first time he’d come close)

Matt dates a lot. He’s not very good at it, the dating, but he craves connection even if it’s fleeting—and it always is because anything else would be reckless—so he does a lot of it anyway. Foggy thinks it’s surprising that none of his “relationships” ever last very long, but it isn’t to him because he may be great at flirting and even better in bed, but everything else? Even without his other reasons, he’s just not so good at the rest of it.

(It’s difficult to be good at the rest of it, because those are the parts that involve trust and talking about things that matter and he’s really good at listening but not so much at sharing unless it’s with Foggy. There’s also the part where once they realize he has a romantic soulmark, people in general aren’t super keen on developing lasting relationships, but that’s not really his fault)

Elektra though...god, Elektra.

She waltzes into his life very deliberately, beating the shit out of two guys he’d been planning on paying a visit to and leaving a piece of fabric at the scene. It’s for him, he knows it’s for him because the rest of the scene is meticulously clean, so it’s obviously a calculated move, a calling card, a challenge, maybe even a warning, and so he takes it, keeps it, and the next night she goes out again and he finds her.

(“You got my note.”

“I did, although I admit I’m not entirely sure why you left one in the first place.”

“Maybe I just thought it would be fun.”

“What would be fun?”

“You and me.”)

And god, everything about her is overwhelming from the very first second. She smells like blood and fire and smoke and her voice is like honey over knives and something in him unfurls and rises up, recognizing that she’s the same, they’re the same, and for once he doesn’t have to hide.

(They fuck the same way they fight—violent and efficient—and it’s almost too much, right on that knife’s edge between enjoyment and sensory overload while never quite tipping the balance, and it’s not even so much that it’s good, but that it’s addicting)

He’s with her for six months and he can’t seem to make himself care that he’s slipping deeper and deeper into the darkness. He’s always prided himself on control, control over his emotions, over the darkness, the violence, over himself. By the end, he’s working with shreds, barely holding himself together, and the part of him that craves the violence, that hates being controlled, loves her for it.

(Matt asks her once about her soulmate and she says she doesn’t have one, but he can hear the lie and read between the lines that, no, she just doesn’t want one, and his stomach twists as he thinks about Stick for the first time in years, wonders if she would go down that same path, and when she kicks him out of bed for “thinking too loud,” he contemplates whether things would be different if he’d had “You got my note” written on his skin)

He’s with her for six months and she almost destroys him. His last night with her is his wake-up call. That’s the night when he realizes how far he’s fallen because he almost kills a man— _and he wants to, oh how he wants to_ —and it’s only by the grace of God that he doesn’t.

(He stops himself, barely, and then runs, his mind reeling with horror, until he’s far enough away that he can think, can breathe, and he empties the contents of his stomach in a random alley because the man’s blood is drying on his hands and he’d been so close, how had he let himself come so close)

When he goes to see Elektra the next morning, her apartment is empty and he knows she’s not coming back.

(It takes him months—eighteen months and four days to be exact—to reestablish the control he’d had before her, to remind himself that his goal is justice, not vengeance, that he has rules for a reason, that he can come back from everything else, but not from killing someone. He slips a couple of times during that period, but he never comes that close again)

Matt doesn’t date at all for his entire 1L year, which Foggy teases him about to hide his concern, but it’s easy to brush off, to make excuses that who even has the time to eat as a 1L, let alone date, and even if Foggy doesn’t believe him, he does let it go.

(It’s not just about Elektra, it’s that he doesn’t trust himself, that he’s focusing all his mental energy on school and maintaining any semblance of control, but he has no way of explaining that without explaining everything, so he says nothing at all)

By the time he’s a 2L, he’s almost forgotten that he has a second soulmate—because if he can’t see it and he doesn’t touch it, he can almost ignore the existence of his other mark completely—but then one day he stumbles in the hallway outside the law library, has to steady himself against the wall, because his mark goes hot enough that he thinks it would burn him to touch it and then ice cold in the next moment, and he goes home immediately and spends the next hour running his fingers over the mark until it returns to normal.

(He wonders about that for years, but doesn’t mention it, doesn’t ask, partly because it would give him away, but also because there aren’t many moments that have scared him that badly, so he prefers not to think about it)

It never happens again though, so Matt tries to put it out of his mind. He’s very much on the fence about this second soulmate, has been since Elektra, because the way he sees it, he’ll either a) end up hiding parts of himself from her the way he does from Foggy, b) tell her everything and be rejected, or c) she’ll be like him and she’ll accept him, which is almost the worst option because he knows what that leads to and he refuses to go back.

(If his subconscious occasionally points out the flaws in that logic, well, he’s always been good at lying to himself)

When Matt starts his 3L year, it’s with very little thought to anything other than graduation and the bar exam and future employment. He’s busy, very much so, between his classes and bar prep (because it’s never too early) and his nighttime activities, so when Professor Williams calls him to ask if he’ll be her TA for the 1L Torts class because her original TA quit on the second day, he knows he should say no. He doesn’t.

(It’s paid, which is what he tells Foggy when he asks, plus he does genuinely enjoy Torts in a way most law students don’t, but that’s not the only reason and he knows it, because even if he’s mostly convinced himself that he doesn’t need his second soulmate, he can’t help but wonder)

There are at least six students that almost pay more attention to him than they do to the actual class, five of whom show up at his office hours every time he holds them for the first month of school, and Foggy thinks it’s the most hilarious thing he’s ever heard. The sixth though, she’s different. She doesn’t try to talk to him, doesn’t go to his office hours to flirt with him or stop by his desk after class to “clarify a concept” or anything like that. She doesn’t even necessarily watch him all the time either, but when she does he can’t help but notice.

(Her name is Darcy Lewis, at least according to the seating chart, and she makes comments under her breath almost constantly about the cases or the lecture and when she gets cold called, she adds her own side commentary about the facts of whatever case it is and he has to force himself not to laugh whenever she does it because it drives Williams up the wall, which is probably why Darcy doesn’t get cold called very often)

Matt likes her before he even meets her, which isn’t necessarily such a terrible thing, except for the fact that when he does meet her, it’s the worst timing in the world.

(He may have built his control back up but some nights are harder than others. It could be argued that maybe he shouldn’t go out those nights, and sometimes he doesn’t, but other times he can’t help it. So he goes out and he puts three guys in the hospital and when he gets home his knuckles are bloody and he has a black eye, but some part of him is purring in contentment and he always hates himself for it later)

When the knock comes at his office door— _more of a closet than an office really, but it’s something_ —he’s wondering if he shouldn’t have just cancelled office hours entirely, but by that point it’s too late. He opens the door and Darcy Lewis is standing there and her hair is down and she’s holding coffee and all he can think is that he’s never been so close to her before, which is probably why he doesn’t stop her when she breezes into the room and says, “So what exactly is a tort anyway?”

It takes a moment to register the words, but then he freezes because no, not her, not now, and he wets his lips before turning to her with, “I’m sorry?”

The thing is, she doesn’t seem to notice anything, never acts any differently than she had when she first showed up, so they talk for about thirty minutes and when she leaves she doesn’t say anything about being his soulmate, so he locks the door behind her and turns off the light so everyone will assume he’s gone and tries to calm his pounding heart because even if she doesn’t know, he does, and she’s both better and worse than he could have imagined, and he can’t be her soulmate, _he just can’t_ , because attaching himself to Foggy was bad enough, he won’t pull her in as well.

(That resolve doesn’t stop him from staying in his office for another two hours, his office that smells like her, like coffee and vanilla and sunlight and jasmine, because he may not deserve her, may never deserve her, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want her)

The thing about fate though, is that it doesn’t like being ignored. It’s funny, because even though fate/the universe/some higher power is theoretically the cause of soulmates, it’s the one thing Matt doesn’t account for when he decides that he’s not going to see Darcy again, which is why, when he comes home one day and Darcy and Foggy are in his kitchen eating Thai food, there’s really nothing he can think of to say.

(He tries, later that night, to convince Foggy that it would be unethical for him to be friends with a student in his class, tries to make the argument that they’re going to be gone in a semester so they really shouldn’t be making friends with 1Ls anyway, tries to say a lot of things, but he can tell the words lack conviction even as he’s saying them and he knows he’s just tipping Foggy off that something is wrong so really it all backfires on him because then Foggy spends the next month trying to get him to tell him what that something is)

So, they become friends, all three of them, and after two months of holding his breath and waiting for her to say something, Matt finally feels confident in the fact that she really doesn’t know and relaxes more in regards to having her around. He tells himself that if she’s around as much for Foggy as for him, it’s fine. It’s something he can live with at least.

(It is however, undoubtedly a test of his carefully crafted control, because he wanted her even before he found out who she is to him and she’s always around and he’s fairly certain she doesn’t even notice, but she never stops _touching_ him and it’s maddening because even Foggy doesn’t touch him like that, with casual brushes of hands and fingers and cold feet pressed against his thigh when he helps her study for her final in December, so he’s almost looking forward to graduation because it means he’ll see less of her and even if it’s not what he wants, it’s definitely what he needs)

There’s one night partway through spring semester when Foggy comes homes after being out with Darcy and asks about Matt’s other soulmark.

“It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me, like, I get it, it’s a personal thing.”

“It’s not that I don’t, it’s just not that big of a deal to me.”

“Why, though? What, did you meet them already? Don’t tell me they rejected you. I wouldn’t believe that.”

“It’s not—they didn’t—I’d really rather not talk about it, okay?”

Foggy’s quiet for a long moment after that and Matt hopes that means he’s going to drop it, but he says one more thing.

“You know, Darcy’s mark just says, ‘I’m sorry.’ Can you believe that? Must be hard to find your soulmate with words like those.”

(He doesn’t say anything else, but the statement is pointed enough that he doesn’t really need to. He doesn’t bring it up again either, at least not for over a year, not until Matt’s stitched up and lucky to be alive and they’re fighting in a way they never have before—

(— _Are you even really blind_ — _Lied to me_ — _…your soulmate, but I guess you don’t care that much about soulmates, do you_ — _…Darcy know, or have you kept this from her too_ —)

—and it’s terrifying because he’s spent so much time trying not to lose Foggy but he never realized how much pain he would cause if everything ever came to light.)

Once, near the end of the year, Matt almost tells her. He almost kisses her too, but that’s beside the point. It’s a late night and one of the rare times when it’s just the two of them (Foggy’s out working with a group on a project for Disability Law) and their books have long since been abandoned. The television is on, turned to some random news channel, but he’s far more focused on the way Darcy’s pressed against his side on the couch until she sits up suddenly.

The news story is about a local murder, domestic violence related, and the longer the reporter talks the more Darcy tenses until finally the report is over and she’s practically vibrating with rage. Matt stays quiet, turning off the TV but otherwise waiting for her. He doesn’t have to wait long.

“Fuck! How many times—what the fuck is wrong with this system that it can’t prevent these things from happening? What the actual—two prior DV convictions and three protective orders over five years and nobody thought they should maybe find a way to take away this guy’s guns permanently? Fucking hell, it’s no wonder victims don’t trust the police. Why the fuck should they when this is the kind of shit that happens? It’s not—it’s not right, it’s not, someone has to be able to do something, it’s called the _justice system_ for a reason—”

The words explode out of her and the sheer force of her anger takes him by surprise because he’s so used to people, so used to law students and lawyers even, being apathetic, seeing and hearing about terrible things and thinking, _well, that’s just how it goes_. Darcy though, she cares so deeply about what’s right, what’s just, and she’s brilliant and blazing and he doesn’t realize until that moment how similar they are, and he has to stop himself from reaching for her as he thinks, _where did you even come from_ , and _god, you’re beautiful_ , and _I love you_ , and _yes, this is my soulmate_.

Except that she’s not. She’s not, because he hasn’t told her, hasn’t asked her to be his, and there are times when he hates it more than anything, hates himself for doing it, but there are other times when he remembers why he’s keeping it from her, because she can do better than him, should do better than him.

After that, Matt keeps his distance a little, which admittedly is not difficult to do because with the end of the year comes bar review and graduation and aliens falling from the sky and everyone has a few things to think about other than soulmates.

(She calls him a week after he & Foggy start at L&Z and tells him that she might be going to work for SHIELD so she’s going to try and finish school early and they actually fight about it a little because he’s concerned about what that would do to her health and also about SHIELD because he doesn’t know them but doesn’t have to know them to know he doesn’t trust them, but she’s resolved anyway and there’s something in her voice when she talks about SHIELD that makes him pause because he’s keeping a lot from her but it’s the first time he wonders if she’s not keeping things from him as well)

He checks up on her in subtle ways though, even when he’s busy that following year, because he can’t help himself. He’s not happy at L&Z, not in the least, and it weighs on him, the injustice that he’s helping to perpetuate, even indirectly, but he doesn’t have a solution for that so he looks after Darcy instead. It’s not much, just little things like making sure she gets home safely when she’s been in the library late, calling her to remind her to eat, to sleep, suggesting to Foggy that they take her out at the end of the weeks when she sounds particularly run-down on the phone…little things.

In the end, she makes it through the year and so does he. She goes to work for the Avengers and he and Foggy set up their own practice and for the first time all year things actually feel right.

Of course, nothing stays perfect forever. Fisk appears and everything goes to hell and it’s all Matt can do to keep up the best he can. In the end he wins, but he’s all too aware of how close they all came to losing, of how much they did and didn’t have to sacrifice to do so.

(Claire tells him the martyrs end up bloody and alone and for the first time, he really looks at what he’s doing, the lack of self-preservation, the running himself ragged, the way he’s basically waiting for someone to kill him even if he’s not planning on making it easy, and he realizes he really doesn’t want to be a martyr)

After that, he knows he has to tell her, at least about him if not about the soulmate thing. Foggy knows, for the moment everything is safe, and it’s the right thing to do. The only thing is, he doesn’t know how, but he at least knows he has to.

And then, Darcy finds him in an alley.

It’s pure chance that he’s there at all. Somehow he managed to misplace all of his canes, so he went looking for one of the ones he’d abandoned a few days earlier and that is how Darcy ends up finding him rifling through a dumpster in an alley near her apartment in his Daredevil uniform at nearly midnight.

“Hey, uh, Daredevil, right?”

Matt decidedly does not run—it’s not her fault that he assumed she would pass the alley without stopping—but he very much wants to. When she starts talking he’s not sure if he wants to laugh or cry, because it’s just so Darcy—of course she would just go up to a vigilante and introduce herself, of course—and she has no idea that it’s him behind the mask.

When he does get the chance to leave, he takes it and goes home immediately, making plans to tell her the next day because it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know what to say—he can make something up on the spot if that’s what it takes, he’s a lawyer, he’s good at that—she deserves to know that she just invited her best friend to Avengers Tower.

Of course, because that’s just how Matt’s life has been going lately, Darcy shows up at his apartment the next day before he’s even dressed.

(He takes a small amount of pride in the way her breathing catches when he answers the door while still pulling on his shirt, but then when he calls her name, the first this she says is _are you Daredevil?_ and he’s pulling her into his apartment as fast as he can because _he cannot have this conversation with her in the hallway_ )

“Matt? Are you—?”

“Yes. Yes, I—yes.” And god, he’s been terrified of saying that for so long and now that he has it’s like a weight has been lifted because she knows, she knows and Foggy knows and he’s not lying so much anymore.

Darcy laughs. She laughs and Matt’s really confused because that’s about the last reaction he ever expected, but then she’s not laughing anymore, then she’s just pissed and yes, there, that’s the reaction he’s mostly prepared to deal with, although he’s not prepared for her to tear through his justifications like they’re the thinnest of tissue paper.

_(“You lied to me.”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Why? Darcy, you would have thought—”_

_“I would have thought what, Matt? What exactly would I have thought? In case it missed your astounding sense of observation, I work with the Avengers. I work with heroes who for the most part are operating outside of the law every single day. My job is literally to make sure they don’t end up in jail or in front of Congress with no justifications for their actions. So, please, do enlighten me, what exactly would I have thought?”_

_And okay, maybe he’s starting to realize that if they’re so easily torn apart, they maybe weren’t very good justifications in the first place)_

“I didn’t…”

“You didn’t trust me.” She says that and it’s as if she’s struck him because no, no that’s not it at all, she has to know that, has to understand that it’s not her, it’s _himself_ that he doesn’t trust and it always has been.

“No. No, that’s not—”

“Then, what, Matt? Because from where I’m standing, that’s the only reason. You didn’t trust me, so you didn’t tell me. That’s what it boils down to.”

“I never wanted you to know this part of me.” And that’s the truth, it really is, because the last time someone knew this part of him, really knew it, things didn’t exactly end well.

“So you didn’t trust me to handle it. Did you honestly think so little of me that you didn’t even consider that maybe I could? Or that I might want to? You thought if I knew, I would just, what, leave?”

“That’s not—I didn’t ever want you to _have_ to handle it. I was trying to _protect_ you.”

_—I was trying to protect you from me, from what I’m capable of, don’t you see, don’t you understand that I ruin everything, that I couldn’t live with myself if I ruined you as well—_

“Oh my God, do you hear yourself when you speak sometimes? Trying to protect me? I don’t need your _protection_ , Murdock. When have I ever needed protecting? Also, logical flaw, counselor, having all of the facts is what will guarantee me the greatest amount of protection. Always.”

Oh.

 _Oh_. That gives him pause because he can’t argue against it, he really can’t, because it’s just…true. And it’s something he never considered in all the time he’s known her. He really should have.

So, Matt does what he should have done in the first place. He apologizes.

“I’m sorry.”

(He says the words and it’s like they’ve come full circle because those are her words, he knows they are, and this is a new beginning for them—if she forgives him, that is—and he knows he has to tell her everything now, because he doesn’t want to be a martyr, doesn’t want to be alone, and she’s his soulmate, _his soulmate_ )

Darcy sighs, but it’s not a frustrated sigh, and then she’s stepping closer and pressing a hand to his chest, and god, the fact that she’s touching him is everything because he was very much afraid she never would again.

“Don’t ever lie to me again. It’s not cool, and if it becomes a habit, I’m really not going to be able to keep forgiving you.” He considers responding, but then she’s wrapping her arms around him and he loses the words he was going to say because she still smells like coffee and vanilla and jasmine, just like she had when they met, and he can hardly even breathe because he loves her so much.

“Anything else you’d like to confess while we’re here?” Matt can tell she means it as a joke, but he freezes anyway and steps back because he has to tell her, it’s only fair that she should know and decide from there because she can’t forgive him if she doesn’t know everything there is to forgive him for.

So, he tells her. And she punches him in the face.

Yeah, he deserved that.

He wants to explain, but he’s not sure how, and she’s not exactly letting him get a word in edgewise, but finally, finally he just says, “I didn’t think I deserved you,” and that, there, that is god’s honest truth and he still believes it even now, but he wants to at least give her a choice.

He tells her everything after that—or almost everything because Elektra is a conversation for another time, when they’re not fighting and possibly when there is alcohol readily available—and once he starts talking he just doesn’t stop until she interrupts him.

“You do not get to decide whether or not you “deserve” me or what I “deserve” or any of that. That’s number one. Secondly, there’s a fairly good sized part of me that thinks the fact that you put rapists and abusers and traffickers in the hospital is a good thing because you know as well as I do that there are certain crimes for which justice does not happen more often than not because the system itself is stacked against the victims, and although maybe I should, I can’t see anything wrong with filling in where the law leaves off. Thirdly…thirdly, I’ve been in love with you for a pretty long time now, so if you feel even remotely similar, I’d very much like to try and make this work.”

(Darcy goes quiet then, like she’s waiting for something, and she is, she’s waiting for him, but he doesn’t even have the words to respond because his mind is right back where it was the first night he almost told her, back to _I love you_ and _where did you even come from_ and he never really let himself believe he could have this, but she loves him, somehow she loves him, and that’s…that’s everything)

“How are you so…who are you?”

“Darcy Lewis, soulmate. But you’ve known that for years, so if it’s all the same to you, I think we should skip the introductions and you should just kiss me. Preferably as soon as possible.”

Matt laughs because he has to, _he has to_ , and then he pulls her to him and kisses her because, well, he has to do that too.

(She kisses him back and her lips are soft and warm and her whole body is pressed against his and then she’s winding her arms behind his neck and shifting up to her toes to deepen the kiss and god, it’s so much better than he ever imagined)

There are two forms of religious thought on the topic of soulmates, at least as far as Catholicism is concerned. By the time he actually accepts both of his, Matt couldn’t care less about where they came from or why they’re his. He’s just glad that they are.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone was wondering, Matt's mark burns that one time because in this universe, if you haven't met your soulmate yet and they die or are otherwise in mortal danger, your mark lets you know. So, when that happens, Darcy's in New Mexico and everything with Thor and the Destroyer is going on. 
> 
> Title from "Control" by Halsey.


End file.
